Re: The Death of RAB?


              Friday, the 19th of August, 2005

I said:
  Perhaps you live in a locality where there are radio stations
  of a sufficient diversity to offer some listening choice.
  Around here, it's NPR or nothing.
htd:
  It's still not analagous, Morris, unless there's some medical study I'm
  not aware of that has found a conclusive link between repeated exposure
  to Celine Dion and childhood athsma.  She's pretty wretched, but hardly
  a health hazard.

It's quite analogous, since we were talking about limited natural
resources and not "health hazards".

htd:
  And they don't suppose trucking, trucking is incidental to
  them; if they were shipped by train instead, the amount of oil consumed
  to deliver them to a consumer would radically decrease, but they would
  still be CDs.
I said:
  But they aren't shipped by train, and the consumers don't go to
  the train depot to pick them up. In fact, big suburban shopping
  malls that people drive to are the way they tend to get distributed.
htd:
  But that is incidental to whether or not the purchase of a CD is as big
  a contributor to pollution as is driving a Lincoln Navigator, no matter
  what metric you apply to it.

Nobody said anything about "the purchase of *a* CD". We were talking
about the purchase of thousands of CDs, and listening to 500 or
so of them in a year's worth of driving. Thousands of CDs adds up
to tens of thousands of dollars---i.e., a number comparable to the
purchase of automobiles. And I was suggesting that the fairness
of the free market probably means that the fact those prices *are*
comparable means that the total consumption of "limited natural
resources" in a Navigator versus thousands of CDs is, well,
comparable. Except of course that CDs come with far more bulk
of disposable packaging.

htd:
  Even the manufacturing doesn't absolutely require the
  use of oil; if it's an electric powered plant & it gets power from a
  nuclear or hydroelectric plant, then its oil consumption is minimal.
I said:
  Oh? I would have supposed there's plastic in them, but if you
  say so...
htd:
  All right, Morris, you've got me.  A CD is made out of approximately
  .001% of the amount of plastic that is in your SUV's trim.

So, 1000 CDs would be made out of approximately 1x the amount of
plastic in my SUV's trim. And the jewel cases and cellophane
wraps? By the way, I tend to make orders of CDs by the dozen or so
at amazon (usually when I get interested in a musician I'll
order a bunch at once), and, so, I have this ritual either with
CDs or DVDs of making what we call "sticky balls" out of the
packaging for my 6-year-old son. You basically collect up all
the cellophane and then start peeling the tape seals and use
the tape to wrap the cellophane ball.

htd:
  It's the oh-so-adorable rhetorical hope of anti-environmentalists that
  eating a single piece of cake and eating the whole cake are morally
  equivalent. They aren't.

So, we are at this wonderful technological moment in
human history when everyman can have the library of the
ages at his fingertips, recorded music, and film. And,
guess what? People buy books, CDs, and DVDs. Not one CD
per person, but lots of them. Heck, my daughter, whose
personal income amounts to weekly allowance plus what she
makes doing barn chores (single-digits or on windfall weeks,
double-digits), has her own collection of tens of CDs.

htd:
  You can't deny the relative excess of
  consumption, so you try to re-cast the argument into absolutes.

No one was denying the "relative excess of
consumption". I was merely pointing out that if
a person bought thousands of CDs, like me, that
that amounted to a consumption comparable to
a vehicle. In point of fact, my monthly amazon.com
expenditures (in acquiring mostly new CDs and DVDs)
are roughly equal to what I now spend on
gas.

htd:
  It's intellectually dishonest, and pretty lame to boot.

Nonsense. The comparison is between a vehicle that
accomplishes what my hobbies and interests need it
to accomplish, where other vehicles don't do that,
and the things you consume that contribute to your
hobbies and interests. What is intellectually
dishonest is to imagine your consumption amounts to
the petroleum consumed in manufacturing one CD
and one CD only.

htd:
  Your Navigator, on the other hand, can't suddenly shed a few tons of
  the excess steel it's hauling around with you everywhere, burning up
  gas, simultaneously increasing demand and decreasing the available
  supply, which means that everybody else has to pay higher prices sooner
  than we would otherwise, just so that you can use more gas.
I said:
  Get this through your idiot skull once and for all: There is
  no other vehicle on the road which can pull a horse trailer
  to horse shows *and* seat at least 6 people *and* get better
  gas mileage.
htd:
  My idiot skull understands that the only vehicle that meets what you
  perceive as your need is any vehicle you can invent a need to justify.
  If there were no such thing as a Navigator, I remain confident that
  life, even your life, would find a way to go on.

You are quite correct. I would own one of those pickup trucks
that gets 8 miles to the gallon (if gas-powered) or 15 miles
to the gallon (if diesel---bigger, more expensive engine),
as opposed to the Navigator which gets 15. In short, I
would own a truck, as in fact I do.

htd:
  The sun would rise,
  the wind would blow, and Celine Dion would probably still be making
  records.  You'd have to take two cars when you actually had six people
  to haul around, but I do that all the time and it has not, so far,
  proved fatal.

You are so ignorant and clueless and judgmental of a lifestyle
you know absolutely nothing about. Who the *** buys two cars
to drive a family around when one bigger car will do? Especially when
those occasions for the six-person drive are, at minimum, a
two-hour round trip, and are in the main instance a cross-country
road trip. Real bright there, htd.  You know,
I just spent three weeks in Seattle, and stayed with a friend
there whom I had not seen since graduate school. He's a
pretty anti-Bush Democrat politically. But, they've raised three
children, and I was tickled to see that his wife drove a Chevy
Suburban. I asked them about it, and especially in the context
of this stupid urban anti-SUV prejudice, and she responded
immediately: "Look, all of our children have been competitive
in water polo, and *this* has been the transport bus for
numberless water polo teams."

I said:
  There *are* other vehicles which pull horse
  trailers, and even some which seat at least 6 people (extended
  cab Ford F350 pickup truck, for example), but they tend to get
  even worse gas mileage (well, there *are* also equivalent,
  and equivalently priced, vehicles, such as a Ford Expedition).
  So, it all comes down to *the use* I make of my vehicle and
  some sort of hypocritical and absolutely erroneous *assumption*
  on your part that *my use of natural resources* (for horse shows,
  for example, or for transporting 6 family members together at
  once) is not as important or as *good* a use as your consumption
  of natural resources in consuming CDs for personal entertainment.
htd:
  I am not making a moral judgment, Morris - you're inferring that part.

A powerfully correct inference, in point of fact.

htd:
  I am pointing out that you are choosing to consume far more than I do,

Bull***. Only in the sense of consumption of fuel.
Not the only relevant sense of consumption out there.

htd:
  and that, as a result, your consumption increases the cost of mine more
  than my consumption increases the cost of yours.

And this is a bad thing because?

htd:
  You are calling me an
  idiot and a hypocrite for my objection to your efforts to justify to me
  your personal injury of me.

So, you claim it as a "personal injury" because I
volunteer to pay the price asked for gasoline? The gasoline
is somehow, yours, and the seller accepting the price
asked for it is somehow cheating you of that gasoline?

Forgive me, hypocrite isn't the half of it.

htd:
  The technical term for what this makes you
  is "unapologetic jerk."  If you just said "yup,
  I'm consuming more,

Gasoline.

htd:
  I'm costing you money, and I'm mortgaging my children's
  and - if you have them - your children's futures.  Don't
  really care," I'd have a modicum of respect for your
  position.  As is, I think you're someone who will
  sacrifice his rational judgment in order to feel morally
  justified in his self-gratification.

I still don't see how you are doing one whit the less
with respect to "limited natural resources", gasoline not
being the only limited natural resource.

I said:
  It also presupposes people driving to
  rock concerts, for instance, which driving they need not do
  except in pursuit of this chosen gratification of music.
htd:
    Buying a CD means that I have to go to a concert?  Oh sweet mother of
    ***, I just bought Johnny Cash's Live at Fulsom Prison album - is
    there any way out of this, or is the contract binding at the time of
    purchase?
I said:
  Buying a CD at present buys into a system in which concerts
  are part of the package. Musicians perform concerts for money, for
  promotion of those CDs.
htd:
  Actually, in the music industry today, most of the profits come from
  the concerts, not from the CDs; the CDs promote the concerts, not the
  other way around.  Which is neither here nor there for the argument at
  hand, but a pretty funky shift, all the same.

OK, it wasn't meant to be shifty, but to point out that CDs and concerts
are connected.

I said:
  And whether you attend the concerts or do not
  attend, that remains the system. In Indianapolis, summer rock concerts
  happen at the Verizon Wireless Center up about 25 miles northeast
  of the center of the city. There are huge traffic jams on I-69
  whenever there is a rock concert there, because nobody lives close
  to there, and everybody drives cars to the concert location. I
  heard Santana there this summer, so I am experienced. Heck, for
  that matter, I remember being driven out to Tanglewood to hear
  some Wagner when once I spent 6 weeks
  at a research project at Harvard. I recall that that music
  appreciation *also* required the burning of fossil fuels,
  which if the audience simply gave up the gratifications of
  music altogether would, no doubt, have made it cheaper
  for me to trailer horses to horse shows.
htd:
  You're throwing in red herrings here, Morris.  My purchase of a cd does
  not make me responsible for the choices - either of concerts to go to,
  or of the transportation to get there - of other music appreciators.

I believe you said the CDs promote the concerts.

htd:
  And you're pulling the absolutist bull*** again - I am arguing for
  moderation, you are replying that because absolute aesceticism is
  undesirable, that moderation must therefore be unreasonable to expect.

So, a semi-truck driver buys a semi-truck and not a Miata to
haul cartons of CDs across the country, when he could perfectly well
simply buy a Miata and drive multiple trips, hauling the CDs one
or two cartons at a time. I buy a vehicle that is capable of
hauling a two-horse trailer to horse shows, which my wife and
daughter compete in. It is a vehicle also designed for
personal comfort of a group of people about my family's size,
and moreso (certainly imagining our drive out to Denver this
coming January) than say a big-cab pickup truck,
but it gets better gas mileage than most choices of
pickup truck. And, by God, it's *my* consumption of fuel
that is the one which is so egregious apparently that horse
shows and horse-show competitions must be shut down
immediately. Those people are too greedy of our natural
resources and need to have their behaviours curtailed and
limited. It's irrelevant that they need fuel-guzzling trucks
to be able to pursue the sport they compete in, that there is
no fuel-efficient car which can pull two horses. *Their*
consumption makes *my* much more moderate consumption
(moderate? umm, by definition whatever *I* do must be
moderate---I live alone when they live with six persons
sharing a living space, but by God, *they* are being
immoderate consumers of energy, whereas I merely value
my independence and privacy).

I said:
  My daughter Helen,
  by the way, came in 5th at the State Fair in Hunter-Over-Fences,
  which is something she only tried in 4-H as a lark.
htd:
  Congratulations to Helen!

Thank you. Her main focus is Pony Club and the sport of
equestrian eventing (a combination of dressage, cross-country
jumping, and stadium jumping). But she joined 4-H because her
two closest friends are in it. The problem is, 4-H's
focus tends to be more western riding. She tried out
everything, including pole bending and barrel racing,
and placed pretty well at the county-fair level.
Her horse is an off-the-track thoroughbred and just
can't accelerate the way the little quarter horses
can at some of the "contesting" games. But the
hunter-over-fences stuff was the closest thing
4-H had to her eventing, and she won that at the county
level and hence got to go on to the state fair.
She really did quite well at it for not having done
it before, but, with hunter-over-fences, unlike the
jumping in eventing, there's not only going
over the jump, but also a judgment by the judge
of the horse's conformation and the style of the
jump that goes into the final score. I don't think
Helen really likes what is called the hunter/jumper
circuit.

I said:
  Oh yeah, and abuse of the drug alcolhol (not to mention other
  drugs) is intimately tied up with live music as it is now
  performed in clubs and concert venues.
htd:
  WTF does tying one on have to do with consumption or spoilage of
  limited resources?
I said:
  It's my understanding that human beings *are* a resource, and
  a limited one at that.
htd:
  Human beings are a resource to capitalists; to humanists, human beings
  are human beings.

No, you have no room here to try and make it look like *I*
am the one having less of a heart. I was talking
about human beings dieing in road accidents as a result
of drinking and driving, which the social practice of
concerts tends to encourage. It was painfully in evidence
to my eyes at the Santana concert (big, outdoor concert
venue), but it is also obvious with smaller bands in smaller
venues. There is always alcolhol served and people do
drink, and all of them typically drive (or are driven
by friends or family) to these venues.

htd:
  But if you want to call us resources, biologics are
  self-replicating & ergo are flow, not stock, resources.  Crunch all you
  want - we'll make more.

My point was that each and every killed human being
is irreplaceable. Which reminds me that highway
safety in the US went down with the introduction of
SUVs into the US markets. And that my friend in
Seattle's family suffered a terrible accident that
nearly killed their oldest son and hospitalized
the mother when a drunk driver swerved across the road
into them. It may have something to do with why she
now drives a big SUV in addition to her being the water-polo
team-mom.

I said:
  When they drink and drive (they *do* drink
  and drive at rock concerts and at live music venues, I assume
  that's a given) a certain number of them tend to get killed,
  not to mention the cars that get smashed because of it.
htd:
  That's fantastic.  I once wrote a paper that made the case that
  microwave burritos were the source of all the world's misery, but this,
  THIS is even better than that.  It should go on ad campaigns: "CD
  purchases can sort of be indirectly tied to grisly deaths, if you're
  really willing to stretch your imagination and put your common sense
  entirely aside.  Is that John Tesh album really worth dying over?  I
  thought not."

CD purchases are a form of consumption whose sole
benefit, on average, is the personal
gratification/entertainment of the purchaser.
And, not one CD, but hundreds of CDs per consumer
(and some consumers having many more than hundreds)
adds up to a big use of limited natural resources.
And this is unlike my wife's and daughter's equestrian
pursuits, which, being sports are not a passive
thing like listening to a CD, but an active pursuit
of personal excellence and active contribution to
a specific cultural excellence.

Now, you do understand do you not, that
I love CDs and I own thousands of them, and
I'm all in favor of people spending money and
using up limited natural resources on things
of no practical benefit like CDs? Likewise,
I'm thankful that somebody out there is
doing what it takes to support the sport of
equestrian eventing, and water polo, too,
even though horses and water polo are not my
things. I *like* it when humans use their leisure
time to promote humanist excellence in art and
in sport. But *please* let us understand that
art and sport are luxuries, and only possible
as luxuries---i.e. by rich people (or indirectly
rich societies) who have excess to consume.

htd:
  Hops are a cyclically renewable resource, last I
  checked, as are both wheat and barley, and beer is no more consumptive
  of oil per calorie than is anything else you get from the grocer.
I said:
  But people are individually priceless, and not renewable
  as far as I know (Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, anyone?).
htd:
  Gosh Morris - you're right.  We should ban music all together because
  some people who are involved in music also get involved with
  hallucinogenic drugs, and hallucinogenic drugs are dangerous, and there
  is a milder drug - alcohol - that is even more widely used, and some of
  the people who abuse alcohol like to listen to music, and sometimes
  they die because they combine alcohol abuse with operating heavy
  machinery and WHO WILL STOP THE MADNESS???  OH, WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE
  THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?

But, specifically the social phenomenon of concertizing is
directly tied into (built into, into fact) drinking and driving.

I said:
    Absolutely no different
    from my use of the appropriate vehicle to trailer horses to
    horse shows in the salient feature that it uses shared
    resources, which resources are shared by means of an open
    market and priced thereby, just that rock music is a
    different, and arguably altogether more popular and
    "commercial" entertainment (attendant with all of the
    manipulations of the middle class that that implies).
htd:
    Is that you or your parents in that income tax bracket?

[both]
htd adds:
    No, ObSong: Cake - Rock'n'Roll Lifestyle

Sure, but, again you dodged the point that your single
lifestyle probably means that you consume limited natural resources
per capita more than the six persons in my household do.

                     Mike Morris
                (msmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)


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